Kim Kardashian has found her niche starring in television shows about the art of publicity. Though her name suggests she’s a Derry Girls character, American Horror Story’s Siobhan Corbyn is a cutthroat publicist on par with Kris Jenner. So of course Kim’s no stranger to the world of PR, and if you ask Kourtney, she’s no stranger to playing a villain, either. Here, we take a closer look at what she’s been up to on each of her shows week-to-week to see which Kim is more menacing.
How menacing was Kim on The Kardashians?
Kim, as if aware that I’d be watching her every move and comparing her to a potentially villainous, potentially Irish publicist, is suddenly on her best behavior this week. With Kourtney having essentially been run off the show, Kim doesn’t have much opportunity to torment her in person. In fact, Kourtney is literally phoning it in this season, shooting her two non-confessional scenes thus far via speakerphone. So instead, Kim’s focus is on her work.
More specifically, she’s in Miami for a meeting of Sky Partners, which is her private-equity fund, and to speak at an event. As this series continues to tell us, Kim is an entrepreneur at heart, but that, of course, is boring to watch. Don’t take my word for it; Kim says so herself: “Most of the time, what I really do in my life is gonna bore the shit out of you regular customers. And that is private-equity funds, that is meetings about my pre-IPO and Skims.†Kim took playing a woman named Siobhan to heart and went full Succession on us. Luckily, there is some entertainment value here for us “regular customers†when Kim’s latex pants rip clean off her butt right before the event she’s speaking at, and she has to hide the tear with her long blazer.
But if anything, Kim is the victim of that wardrobe malfunction, not the antagonist. I guess technically her butt is the antagonist? Anyway, her next stop brings us back to the long, overarching Kourtney versus Kim feud, because the partnership with Dolce & Gabbana that started this whole mess isn’t over just yet. She’s in Milan for the launch of the campaign, and despite her attempts to recruit Khloé to come with her, she’s there alone. So she FaceTimes her kids, and we see that North has taken it upon herself to sage Kim’s bathtub. What evil forces does North feel the need to cleanse? I’ll throw a couple sinister points Kim’s way for what we can only assume is a haunted bathtub.
That sageing might have just done something, because right afterward, Kim gets an unexpected text from Kourtney, who sends her a photo of their dad when he was young, which she takes as a step in the right direction. In their confessionals, both sisters signal that they’re finally ready to move past this issue, and Kim even says that they’ve been texting the whole trip. “She’s my sister, come on, we’re not fighting like that forever,†she assures us. But to be fair, they’ve been fighting like that for as long as we’ve known them.
Because of this newly brokered peace, the only really objectionable thing Kim is up to this episode is working with Dolce & Gabbana in the first place. And not just because of the Kourtney conflict of interest, but because of the company’s long problematic history. Kim might not be a publicist herself, but now she plays one on TV, and she should know better than to associate with D&G.
How menacing was Siobhan on American Horror Story?
American Horror Story loves randomly flashing back a few hundred years to show us a brief scene that presumably has some bearing on what’s going on. This week, we flash back to England in 1555, where Queen Mary has given birth to a monster baby — an AHS staple. In reality, Queen Mary famously had a false pregnancy. When two hooded figures appear to collect the baby, Mary begs them not to, but they had a deal: a fruitful reign as queen in exchange for the baby.
The ominous baby-barterers are played by Billie Lourd and Leslie Grossman, who reappear in the present day timeline as “the Ashleys,†crisis-PR experts that Siobhan hires to rehab Anna’s image. While AHS is known for having actors play different characters, it’s just as likely that the Ashleys are the same baby thieves from 1555, especially since we’ve seen similar hooded figures haunting Anna. Is it possible that Siobhan is in cahoots with them to trade Anna’s baby for an Oscar?
In any case, it’s immediately clear that the Ashleys are evil because they offensively laugh at the thought of Anna going on The View, saying the show died 20 years before Barbara Walters did. I don’t care if they’re after her baby or not, that sheer disrespect for Joy Behar puts them in villain territory right off the bat.
Instead of booking her on a daytime talker to bounce back from her vomit-filled breakdown at the Gotham Awards, the Ashleys’ big plan is for Anna to put out an Instagram Reel that will “break the internet.†That’s right, yet another Kim Kardashian reference. And their suggestion to post a Reel instead of a TikTok is further evidence that they’re from 1555.
The video in question is a black-and-white “viral feminist anthem†shot on the High Line (the scariest part of this season so far), in which she says, “It’s my body; I’ll vomit if I need to.†A send-up of the art of spin, the video simultaneously celebrates National Women’s Reproductive Health and Sexual Awareness Month and announces Anna’s pregnancy, proving to be such a success that Taylor Swift reposts it. But let’s be real, Tree Paine would never associate with the Ashleys.
Meanwhile, we find out that Siobhan has been sleeping with Hamish, the director of Anna’s film — a secret arrangement that she sees as purely transactional, despite him professing his love for her. As she leaves, she tells him that he sounded dumb in an interview he gave about how he came up with the movie’s plot. “We know what happened, Hamish, but no one else can,†she says, threatening to break his dick off if he tells whatever this secret is. Every episode leaves us with more and more questions and very few answers.
Who did more tormenting?
Perhaps Kim has some Ashleys of her own, because she’s slowly but surely rehabbing her villainous image. She and Kourtney have finally taken a step in the right direction, and peace appears to be on the horizon, which hopefully means Kourtney will start filming again. Meanwhile, the reverse is happening with Siobhan, whose sinister cracks begin to show more and more each episode. After bringing in the ominous Ashleys and alluding to a secret plot with Hamish, it’s clear that Siobhan was far more menacing this week.